Why do I love The Witcher Wild Hunt

I simply think that W3 is the best game in the world. I know each of you could name a game that is subjectively better for you. However, I do not really care about it. I fell in love with W3 completely. I bought GTX 1070 for this specific game, because I love the graphics on ultra settings. I lent my computer to my roommate, because I really wanted him to play this game. I spent half a day watching him play it.

I really love that game. It’s art.

Rarely do I finish the whole game. This may be due to the fact that I’ve mostly played games that cannot be finished – e.g. League of Legends, MMOs or the Sims. The first game that I did finish was…

The Witcher 1.

That game seemed beautiful to me at that time, really. I cannot imagine that now, but I remember the feeling that the settings are so full of details, light and colors. I am not one of this hardcore players that love Dark Souls – like games, so I was fond of the fight system. The last scene in the game (when Geralt strolls through the snow and meets characters from the game) was really very emotional for me.

That is why I was really looking forward to the next part. The first game I had borrowed from my friend, the second one I got from my parents. I was kind of shocked that they bought me such an expensive game, because during my whole childhood my mum would tell me how I’m wasting my time on games and how she’ll never pay for it. They must’ve seen how much I wanted it. :) My daddy even bought me a version with the Medallion (I even wore it for a while).

So I got the game at the day of the premiere and I got stuck in the prologue. When I changed difficulty to easy, the game was too easy. When I switched to medium, I couldn’t get pass it. That made me very frustrated and cooled down my excitement towards the game. They balanced it in further updates, but my newly met boyfriend infected me with League of Legends, which was rising back then. And I sunk. For over a year I would play mostly it. To be honest, I wasn’t very good at it. I played mostly support, as I usually do in multiplayer games and I had my better and worse moments.

So I forgot about the Witcher 2.

Untill the one PGA (Poznan Game Arena – big game event in Poland) when the trailer for W3 was shown. I heard my heart beating the whole time. It was perfect. Yennefer! Ciri! Finally, the characters that I loved from books have their appearance in the game!

My excitement rose so much, that I preordered W3 (didn’t have to ask my parents this time :) ).

At the day of the premiere I brought the game home. And I realized, that my graphic card is not as good as I thought. The game looked terribly and was glitchy, but I played it despite this. I didn’t play for long, as soon I got swamped by my studies. I didn’t play the game for over one year. When I was crunching my master thesis project, I swore to myself that the first thing I’ll do when I’ll regain freedom will be playing W3. When I got my title, as a reward for 5 long, hard years I bought myself this new graphic card. And I played the Witcher 3. I passed the game, although the DLCs are waiting for the GetNoticed contest to finish. ;)

So here are 7 reasons why I love the game so much (in random order):

The World

Long before the first game was made, I already swallowed all of 7 books. I immediately fell in love with them, showed them to my best friend and she loved it too. In the game I see the world known from books brought to life. And that is done really realistically and well. The NPCs, the villages and cities are exactly as I imagined them when reading the book. It was great being able to dive in all of that again.

The Characters

The main characters really have their own personalities. Yennefer is a cold bitch, but in the end we can see how much she cares about Geralt. To the ones that did not like Yen, there was greatly designed Triss waiting around the corner. Zoltan and Jaskier (Dandelion – sorry but I’m really tied up to the polish names) are also great and fun to talk to. There are also plenty of characters that are not really good and not really bad – they have their own aims and sometimes it’s hard to make choices whether to help them or not.

The Dialogues

Oh God, the script is so great! I would often burst into laugh, even when just walking through the city and listening to the random chit chat of NPCs. I didn’t skip any of the lines up until the very end, when I was really impatient to finish the game. Also you know, the origin of the game is polish and the polish dubbing is spectacular! I love Geralt’s voice, I love the acting, I love the endless jokes. This is by far my favorite (of course it sounds better for me in polish):

Even talking to an old lady during the minor side quest could bring some great moments (starts at 7:53):

The Music!

Oh God, that music! :D I listened to it for hours, even when not playing the game. Especially the tracks that were played during the fights were really heartreate-lifting! You immediately know that there’s something serious going on!

That is definitely the game that you have to play with your headphones on.

And of course this little beautiful piece of art:

Honestly I always get dewy-eyed when I listen to this. Too bad during the game the song was chocking (I heard it’s because of the limitations of their dialogue system).

The Graphic

I truly have no regrets about buying that graphic card. The game looks stunning on maximum settings. The sunsets, the cities, the forests, that Skellige moutains! At least once a day I would position the ingame camera towards a nice view and tell my fiancé “Look how beautiful!”. I really liked going on foot through the world or riding a horse slowly to enjoy the environment.

The Plot

There was a moment in the game when I really thought it is gonna be The End soon. So I got up early that day (thankfully it was Sunday) and played for a few hours. It turned out is was a big moment, but I was only in like 3/4 of the game. This was the most emotional moment of any game I have played. I was crying for the whole time so much, that I barely saw the screen. :D I have to admit even the actual ending was not that touching for me. Oh, by the way, there are many endings of course. My boss had not the happiest one and loaded an earlier save just to get to the better one. ;) I happily got the best one I guess! I was really shocked how meaningful were some choices that I thought were not relevant. At the end I was all like: OH NO NO PLEASE NO, OH GOD NO…. YES, YESSSS! :D

Face animations

Last, but not least – I loved Geralt’s face. It was full of emotions and added additional meaning to everything he said.

/
Oh, this song just started playing, look how great!

I’m so glad I have an original soundtrack!
/

These are the things which I valued the most. Of course, there are many more great things: the fight system, crafting, the fact that I spent several days just finding pieces of armor, because it looks so cool, the open world, side quests that felt so relevant I can’t imagine not doing them, monsters design, alchemy, plurality of tactics (everyone that I asked had different favorite way of fighting).

The game got extremely popular and you know why? Because everything in it is done right. There are some little bit worse moments, for example a buggy horse, but overall – there is simply not a single thing fucked up.

And that is not common in nowadays AAA games.

Also, the game was made in polish studio, in the town where I live! How awesome is that! <3

Thank you CD Projekt guys for delivering such an intense experience, thank you!

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